Break it Down

The longer a project is the less you’re able to predict how much work you can accomplish. I’m sure you have a clear idea how much work you can get done in a day and you’re probably able to predict what you can do in a week. But two weeks? It gets a little fuzzier. A month? You can’t track that in your head anymore. A year? Forget it.

Break your projects down into timeframes that are easier to understand. If you have a one day project, break it down by the hour. If it’s a one week project - what can you accomplish in five, one day bursts? Chunk that month-long project into four ambitious milestones and further break those weeks into day-long goals. The year-long project. Yeah, you guessed it: segment that thing into twelve month long chunks with four week-long goals.

This will impose upon you a structure that asks what you can get done in each of its increments. You’re not designing by the gut, you should be able make the prediction. Sometimes you’ll be right and sometimes you’ll be wrong. That’s fine. Each time you take a stab at predicting how much you can get done the better you be at estimating in the future.

If you’re not actively challenging yourself this way you’re going to waste time. And the longer the project is the more time you waste. Give a person a week to get something done and they’ll probably surprise you by how much they can accomplish. Give that same person a month to do the same project and they’ll get less done. Give them a year? You’re just wasting time and resources.

Build a stronger network

Networking isn’t just about shaking hands and passing out business cards, it’s about connecting with people who share your passions. Sometimes those people are the link to a new opportunity but most often all you’ll get from someone will a conversation. Not everyone will be in a position to help you realize your dreams but that doesn’t mean they can’t be helpful.

Shift your focus away from yourself. Seek out the people who are passionate about their work and committed to excellence. Make note of these people and start introducing them to one another. Become a social connector. Look for opportunities to link the people in your network, then step back and let them make things happen. Ask for nothing in return and watch your network solidify around you.

Making connections for other people doesn’t cost you anything, it keeps you on the forefront of people’s minds, builds your social currency and establishes a nice pattern of reciprocal behavior. If you’ve made a connection for someone in the past they’re more likely to make a connection for you when the opportunity arises. Give more and receive more.

Instead of asking how people can help you, start looking for ways to connect the people around you.

You know nothing

The more you know the more you realize how little you know. It’s so much easier to embrace new ideas and information when you push the ego to the side. Life is easier, and more interesting, when you accept that you don’t have all the answers. New solutions present themselves, you allow yourself to be taught by students, employees and people from other backgrounds. You grow.

Great ideas come from all directions and absolute statements can often be the box that limits us. Absolute statements might serve the needs of bigots, politicians and the insecure but you’re better than that. Sure, there are some truths that we accept to be true: gravity, our dependence on oxygen, the thing I’m looking at is called a computer, etc. But even those things have different names in different languages. Often the ideas we spend so much time and energy defending are simply a different way to explain a similar idea or need.

Even statements that are true at face value are worth questioning. Is the sky blue? No, not always. And what does ‘blue’ mean? Ten people imagining a blue sky will have a different image in their mind. An individual who grew up in Beijing will associate a different color sky from the person who grew up in Malibu. Not too long ago people accepted that the world was flat. What other things do we accept as truth that might be disproved over time? What things do you accept as truth that are the adoption of someone else’s values?

Set your ego aside and allow yourself to be a student. Question any individual or statement that seeks limit your understanding of the world. Accept constraints and definitions when they help you but don’t accept them blindly. Be curious, question everything.

Take big steps

There’s a time and place for taking the scenic route but when you’re working on a deadline or looking to make progress fast you need to take big steps. Nothing will get you where you’re going faster than opening up your stride, focusing on your goal and thinking less about the details. Put ten people in a room and ask them to imagine a running cheetah and they’ll each imagine it differently. Design is same way. You can discuss an idea all day but no one in a meeting will be imagining the same thing until they can experience it firsthand.

In the initial stages of a project try pushing beyond your comfort zone. Get the big ideas out of your head so you and your team or clients can react to them. Move fast. It’s great if you’ve taking a step beyond what anyone was expecting because people will be in a better position to articulate their values. You’ll learn what people like, you’ll learn what they don’t like and you might just surprise everyone with something no one expected.

Small steps will take you longer to reach your destination. You might get the same result with tiny, iterative steps but it’ll take you longer to reach your destination and you risk getting stuck fixating on details too early in the process. Nothing kills energy for a project like micromanaging and endless revisions.

Once you’ve established the direction and your group has a shared set of values you can shorten your stride and shift focus to the details.

The Power of Submission

“If you want to push then I'm ready to push, but if you’re pulling while I'm pushing then why'd you ask me to push?”
-Aesop Rock

In a culture of leaders and leader wanna-be’s what does it mean to be a team player? It means everyone, regardless of role or title, is willing to get a little dirty.

It’s my philosophy that leaders and followers are all committed to a similar ideal, product or team. Their roles within that structure might be different but they have all submitted their ego to something larger than themselves and in giving themselves to the goal they will do whatever it takes to succeed. Even if that means letting go.

Some people strive for leadership because they want people to follow them and, by my definition, that person isn’t a true leader. Who wants to follow someone whose goal is to simply have followers? The leader needs to provide a vision beyond themselves and demonstrate their commitment. By giving themselves to the goal, submitting to it, they lead by example.

Even if your natural state is in a leadership role, try stepping back when someone is more qualified than yourself to take the reins. Let the people around you supply answers, give them space to succeed and let them provide answers and inspiration. There is power in releasing control. As a leader you can choose when and how to submit to your team. Allow yourself to be led.

Don't be a Kanye

We’ve all worked with a Kanye at some point in time. They are the center of their world and we are all caught in their orbit. Their ideas are superior, they can’t be told how something is done and they don’t receive feedback well. They don’t play well with others and the bold ideas represented in their work are ultimately undermined by their ego, caustic communication skills, ultimatums and hyperbole. Eventually they become irrelevant because the ego that drives them fearlessly into a powerful creative space is the same thing that makes them unbearable.

They are an archetype, a caricature that is easily understood, used for what they are good for and ignored or dismissed when they are no longer relevant.

The amount of money they generate determines their longevity. Since of us don’t generate the flood of revenue that Kanye does, we need to be more personable and learn to collaborate. The quality of your work is important but so is your ability to communicate effectively and inspire. There isn't room for divas and shit-talkers in most companies and creative partnerships. If people don't enjoy your company, they won't want to spend time with you (unless, of course, they're making lots of money by spending time with you).

Strive to support the people around you. Elevate them and you elevate yourself. Don’t be a Kanye.

Make time every day

How do you find the time to get things done? My first drum teacher told me to make the time, every day, to practice. He said 5 minutes per day is better than 2 hours once per week. I apply this principle to everything but expand the time allotted to a minimum of 15 minutes. Anyone can set aside 15 minutes daily. Turn off the TV and avoid Facebook. 

If you’re like me you have a dozen things happening at any given point in time. Does that mean you need to spend 15 minutes per day on every project? No, you’ll need to figure out how many projects you can reasonable manage and then prioritize them. Many of my current projects are solo, so I can work on 3-4 things concurrently and feel like I’m making progress. If I was working in teams the number of projects would drop because teams generally take more energy.

Consistency and developing momentum are the goals. Thinking about your project regularly means your brain will always be churning on that idea, solving problems, in the background. The more time you can spend, daily, the better as long as that time is well spent. If you're stuck and unproductive, switch projects or take a walk. 

Recently I was asked how to get started on a project. The person was setting aside time but was stuck figuring out what could be done in only 15 minutes. Treat your planning the same way you treat your production. Start by setting aside small chunks of time to identify your questions and clarify your goals. Break down the concept into addressable/actionable items, prioritize and, once you have a clear path, start using that daily time to make something.

You are more than your job description

We have a need to organize, sort and make sense of the universe. We compulsively define things. It’s why we gravitate towards rule systems like religion and science. It’s why we place so much value in our belief systems, articulating and staunchly defending them. It’s what helps us make sense of the world. It’s why we play games, matching trios of like colored gems and candy and it’s why we fight wars.

Life is becoming increasingly complex and the more complicated a system becomes the more rules are needed to govern it. We define, stratify and segregate each other, and ourselves, based on limited definitions because its just too hard to see the larger picture. He’s a banker. She’s a doctor. I’m an artist. He’s a teacher. That person is white, black, asian or latin. We become so used to these shallow descriptions that we forget that we’re all deeper than what we look like or what we do for a living.

You may not make your living as a doctor but you can be a healer. You may not make your living as a scientist but you can struggle to understand the world. You may not make your living as a therapist but you can listen. You make not your living as an artist but you can make art. You can do all of those things, and more, every single day.

Don’t accept a one-dimensional description for yourself and look for the depth in the people around you.  

Try combining ideas to make something new

Often the spark of a new idea comes from connecting two previously disparate concepts. Tape and sand makes masking tape. Peanut butter and chocolate makes a candy. Mobile phones and music players make the iPhone. You get the idea. There’s a reason people often pitch ideas as “It’s like _____ meets _____!” The first idea establishes the base set of assumptions and the second idea turns everything on its head by introducing a set of previously unrelated ideas.

You could riff on this all day to develop new ideas. Want to make a dance show? Great. Start with the style of dance and begin adding the secondary concept until something sparks your imagination. It’s a modern dance show about cooking. It’s a ballet about loneliness of travel. It’s a bellydance show about non verbal communication. Want to write a new song? Choose your initial concept, maybe the style of music then add the secondary idea. It’s bluegrass song about transhumanism. Its a quartet about the subway. Its an EDM song about longing.

Once you put those ideas in a shared space and you’ll start seeing connections and opportunities for interpretation.

Try this: List the kind of thing you want to make (a book, cake, dance piece, animation, game, etc) then write down your central theme. Is your book a western? Fantasy? What kind of cake do you want to make? What style of dance? Now add the curveball secondary concept. Try listing a bunch of these and see which ones spark your imagination. Its a western novel about lemons/sex/vampires/cooking/relationships. It’s a German Chocolate cake with steampunk/berries/bacon/humor.

Don’t hold back or edit. Have fun.

Know your strengths

Do you know your greatest strengths? Your weaknesses?

On some projects you’ll need to collaborate with people whose skills are different from your own and sometimes you’ll need people with comparable skills. To make effective team-building decisions you’ll need to know yourself.

Try this: write down your single greatest skill. The thing you do better than anything else. Then do the same with your weakness. Now find some people you’ve collaborated with in the past. Folks you trust to give you an honest answer. Ask them to name your greatest strength and weakness. I bet you’ll get some surprising answers that are different from your self evaluation. That’s because we don’t see ourselves clearly by default. Who we are gets clouded by who we want to be.

Have you been choosing collaborators based on who you are or who you want to be?

Let users break things

You can’t control everything. There’s always going to be the person who puts peanut butter in your casserole, tries to break the rules of your game or use your art as a cocktail coaster. Sometimes they they want to push the limits and sometimes they're just doing what makes sense to them. They can still help you make your things better.

You want to do user testing with folks who put your work through normal paces. They’ll help you you understand how your product suits normal people’s needs. But you also want people who will stress test your concept. Challenge users to break your design. They’ll surprise you by helping you make your product more stable and they may even come up with new ways to use what you’ve made.

Adults have a tendency to withhold opinions because they don't want to upset anyone. Inviting them to do something unexpected might help them remove their filter and get down to having some fun.

Feed the cauldron

If you plan on making magic you’ll need the right ingredients. They might be as exotic as eye of newt or fluxweed but more often than not they will be things like time away from the computer and targeted inspiration.

Consume and use the kinds of things you’re making. If you’re writing a fiction book, read novels. Baking a cake? Eat tons of different cakes. Inform your palette and make decisions about what you believe in important. You don’t need to replicate what you’ve explored but the act of exploring will give you new ideas, help you through sticking points and help you identify what you don’t want your thing to be.

And while you’re exploring, stray from the path and explore things that have no obvious connection to what you’re making. Develop new vocabulary to describe those experiences and ask yourself how they might connect to your project. The ingredients for creativity are all around us, we just need to figure out what to make.

Plan your day

The question I’m asked most often is, “How do you plan your day?”. I break it into three chunks: Prep, Play and Production. This works for me but may not work for everyone. The most important thing is that you plan your day in whatever way works for you and then honor that plan. Here's what I do...

1. Prep (morning): Wake up, Eat/shower/coffee, Do admin (emails, phone calls, Facebook), Close Facebook, Plan for the day’s project. The goal is to clear out distractions and seed the brain with ideas.
2. Play (lunch): You could do anything here that doesn’t require lots of active thought or communication. Take walk, clean, make a meal, etc. I go to the gym. Let ideas from from the Prep stage bubble around in your mind.
3. Production (afternoon): Work on the project. By the time I get to the Production stage in the afternoon I have ideas and clear actions fresh at my fingertips. Leave Facebook closed until goals for the day are met.

Buy yourself some time

Feedback doesn’t always come at a convenient time. You might be deep in thought, in the middle of a conversation or actively trying to solve some other problem when an unexpected distraction drops in your lap. Shifting gears isn’t easy and very often a jarring shift means we don’t receive the distraction as gracefully as we would if we were prepared. Buy yourself time to react. Try one of these...

1. Take a deep breath and give yourself time to collect your thoughts.

2. Make a 'thinking' gesture. Example: lean back, touch your chin, nod, say 'Hmmmm....". Create a pause in conversation.

3. Be direct and tell the distracting person to give you a minute.

Over the years I've used all of these, professionally and personally, and I’m sure you can come up with your own scripted actions for buying yourself time. Try it and let me know what works for you!

Dial back the heat

Sometimes creative conversations get heated. People get attached to their ideas, they dig in their heels and friction develops. What are you supposed to do? Dial back the heat by acknowledging the tension. It seems obvious but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated. Example, "It feels like things are getting tense. Let's take a breath, step back and refresh ourselves on the goals." 

Once the tension is abated ask whether your partner is willing to entertain other ideas. Most people will acknowledge that there might be other solutions. Then invite them to help you explore them.

Another strategy for reducing the stress of competing ideas: consider listing the project goals and invite other people to help prioritize them. Often this will expose emotional attachments and focus the conversation on what is needed, as opposed to what is desired, and lead to alternate solutions.

Try a boss-free brainstorm

Want to kill a brainstorm? Invite the boss. Participants will hold back their wilder contributions and the second the boss opens his/her mouth the session will be dominated by their ideas. And even if boss holds their tongue the team will waste time looking for approval.

Bosses around the world might think, “Well, yeah, I’m the boss and I want my team to figure out to make my ideas work.” Fine, but that’s not how to get the best ideas from your team. Let them surprise you. A team needs some space away from their boss and the risk of judgement. Bad ideas will flow in a brainstorm and that’s fine because sometimes they lead to good ideas. If a team is second-guessing the quality of their ideas they won’t offer as much.

Hey boss, help your team by defining project goals and then step out for coffee. Try a boss-free brainstorm and you’ll see a difference in the quality and volume of ideas generated.

An introduction to Scripts

I'll broadly define Scripts as recurring conversations in everyday life. They are situational and range from the banality of "How about the weather?" to something more loaded like "Tell me why I should hire you." Almost every conversation has an associated script and expectations on both sides of the conversation. If you know the function of a script you can better anticipate the needs of the person(s) you're speaking with.

As an example, The 5 Whys, are an effective script for helping a client articulate their goals.

Personally, I love conversations that veer from known scripts into unexpected territory because participants need to switch off their autopilot and pay attention. Ironically, the people who know me can anticipate that I will go off-script so even my desire to break the script becomes a script!

90% of feedback is worthless

But that last 10% is pure gold so it’s worth plowing through the trash to find the treasure. Okay, maybe that’s harsh, but its also true. Everyone comes to a feedback session with their own ideas and agendas. And you probably do the same thing when you’re giving feedback because, by default, people see the world through their own eyes. Makes sense, right? Empathy takes work. And sometimes empathy needs a little pat on the bottom to get it moving along.

Thankfully there’s something simple you can do to increase the percentage of usable feedback. Before you start collecting feedback make sure people know your goals.

Blam. Easy as that. It’ll save you time, improve the focus of the feedback and, as an extra bonus, you’ll be less defensive because you won’t be getting reactions to things that don’t address your primary concerns.

The three paths to innovation

If you’re innovating on an existing product or idea the entire process might involve hundreds of decisions  - but the initial steps aren’t so mysterious. You have three choices that take into account your goals, risk tolerance and timeline:

1. Continue the current aesthetic. You might make this decision to save time, leverage existing brand awareness, etc. Safe and secure.

2. Evolve the the current aesthetic. Maybe you’ve received feedback that will help refine the user experience or you discovered something new about your audience that needs to be addressed. Assumes some risk and additional development time.

3. React to the current aesthetic. Perhaps you want to make a statement, surprise users with something fresh and possibly get press for the shift in direction. The riskiest option and possibly the most expensive.

Identify your questions

If your questions about a project aren't clear you won’t know how to prioritize steps towards the goal. Aside from acting as a To Do list there are several other benefits of listing your questions.

• It removes monkey-chatter. Until questions have been addressed they take up mental and emotional space in your brain. Documenting them helps eliminate that distraction.
• Once you have listed you questions they become more manageable, easier to address and prioritize.

We tend to spend our time on smaller, easy to solve problems because they’re require less energy and we can pile them up, which is good for the ego. At the end of the day we review what we got done and the bigger the pile the better we feel. But do all those smaller tasks require action? Be wary of filling your day with small tasks that don’t advance the larger concept.